


Genetic Interludes

by Myracuulous



Series: A Matter of Genetics [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Kid Fic, Sequel, awkward long distance moms, sexual themes but nothing explicit, some sexual themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 02:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13424328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myracuulous/pseuds/Myracuulous
Summary: Long distance relationships are hard, especially when you're juggling family, career, and world-hopping vigilante activity. But surely a pair of brilliant minds, perhaps with the help of their nine-year-old genetic remix, can make it work? Short domestic and/or fluffy scene(s) from the same 'verse as Genetic History.





	Genetic Interludes

**Author's Note:**

> By popular demand, here's at least one more scene from the same 'verse as Genetic History. If I write any other short, plot-light fluff scenes from the same, I'll include them here as additional chapters. A sequel similar to the original work (more action-oriented with an overarching narrative) will get posted on its own if it ever gets written. Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the original with kind words and/or requests for more, you were instrumental in me deciding to write this bit out!
> 
> If you haven't read Genetic History yet, this will include spoilers, and may not making a tremendous amount of sense. If you hate reading longer fic and just want to read this as fluff, I've included a list of pertinent spoilers in the end notes for you to peruse for context if you'd like.

The Minister of Genetics all but collapsed into the master bedroom of her penthouse apartment, setting down a heavy bag of data sticks and printed reports from people who apparently couldn't read instructions and send their proposals electronically like the rest of the world. Taking her position with Oasis had opened up the possibility of near-unlimited funding and freedom for her own work, but it came with the responsibility of managing 1/8th of the great desert city-university project. For the next full week, Dr. Moira O'Deorain would be spending her mornings listening to petitions, and her evenings reading through the supporting documentation of over two hundred experimental proposals, ranking them by cost and utility for the allocation of Oasis funding. If only someone would propose a scientific cure for paperwork.

But the schools were great, and the lab equipment second-to-none, and damn if the view from the Ministerial suite wasn't a pleasant little perk on evenings like this. The city sparkled below her balcony, buildings like delicate filigree jewelry laid out in patterns defined by the most modern civic engineering principles. A testament to human ingenuity, to science, to a better tomorrow. At least, if the local genetics community could get it together and stop wasting her time with proposals for, and she picked a printed report at random, multi-coloured grass? And they wanted how many millions in funding?

She tossed the report onto her bed, and started pulling off the outer layers of her Ministerial attire. Her home unit beckoned her from her bedroom desk, its holographic screen displaying a few important alerts she'd received while she was in session. News report, news report, school form for Einin, news report, Angela. The last one she'd set for herself two weeks ago, when Angela had left for some unspecified mission to an unspecified country with a group of friends whose propensity for heroics had been illegal since the passing of the Petras Act. Two weeks since they'd last spoken, but today she was home again.

Moira hesitated. Angela would call first, she usually did. Unless she didn't, unless she didn't want to. _ You are nearly fifty, and you are being childish. Stop. _ They were adults; she would call Angela, and they would talk, and this fragile thing they had between them would survive another day.

Still, Moira ignored the call program and turned instead to her vanity and its huge, inviting mirror. The time she took each day in front of it was an indulgence, yes, but one the world would have to pry from her cold, dead, immaculately-manicured hands. Oasis fashion favoured abstract, mathematical designs that showcased cutting-edge technology, so Moira had attended her morning meetings with a coiling lightpaint spiral around her blue eye, reminiscent of the targeting mask she wore with her more aggressive suit. A brush dipped in the specialized paint's removal fluid quickly took it off, and another with foundation covered the freckles and fine wrinkles that removal exposed. A touch here to refresh her eyeliner, there to add colour to her lips… Stepping back, she examined the results: porcelain-smooth, wicked sharp, and bordering on inhuman. 

There. Now she could call Angela.

She settled into her office chair, and pressed the call button with only a momentary flutter of nerves. Angela answered after a few tense heartbeats, and soon Moira’s display was full of her weary, smiling face. Oh, she was a vision, gold locks framing her against the blue background of her room. Perhaps it was the name, the subtle hand of confirmation bias giving new meaning to everyday sights, but it was eerie how often the doctor looked the part of an angel. Her face was freshly cleaned, her shirt casual, and as always she made Moira feel briefly overdressed.

“Dr. O’Deorain, how nice of you to call,” she said. “I trust the evening finds you well?”

“As well as might be expected, Dr. Zeigler,” Moira replies, mimicking her lover’s faux-formal tone. “And did your travels go smoothly?”

“As smoothly as might be expected.” Angela smiled, and they both danced around the obvious questions of where she’d been and what she’d done. That was Overwatch business, and keeping Overwatch and Talon out of this tenuous relationship was the only way they’d found any sort of equilibrium. “How was your morning? Einin tells me you’re taking grant proposals this week.”

Moira sighed. “All week. I have twenty five to read by Monday, plus whatever the sub-ministers push upstairs. It’s like grad school all over again. With worse spelling. But Einin has submitted her first proposal this season, so at least there’s something to look forward to. Ministry of Transportation.”

“So I’ve heard, in detail. She asked me to look over her paper, it’s incredibly advanced.”

“As always.” Moira smirked in subtle pride.  _ Her _ daughter, her perfect creation, already taking science to new heights. The laws of nature would be hers to bend to her will before she turned twenty, and it was glorious. Moira would have rather laid waste to all of Oasis than get in her daughter’s way, and yet…

“It’s also very ambitious,” Angela continued. “Realistically… do you think it’s going to get approved?”

Moira’s faint smile vanished. “Perhaps. I expect it will get sent back as R3: request for resubmission with revisions. The science won’t be a problem, but her inexperience might be. She’s requested a lab with six assistants under her supervision, when the only formal lab work she’s done is through school.”

“Trying to run before she’s mastered walking? I wonder where she got that from.”

“Says the woman who was running a hospital at twenty two.”

“After I worked as a doctor there for two years.” Angela leaned back against her blue wall. “But, point. I suppose we’re both to blame.”

“An R3 might, in some ways, be good for Einin. A few early setbacks might teach her a sense of… appropriate scope.” 

“Something her mother is still working on at age nearly-fifty?”

“One does wish for one’s children to have better lives than one’s own.” Moira’s eyes wandered from the screen to the photograph of Einin she kept at her desk, beaming proudly over her first graduation certificate. So far, so good, she hoped. “But, who knows? Hassoun is fickle in his old age, maybe he’ll give Einin the lab. I’ve told him not to favour her for my sake, that’s about all I can do.”

“I’m pretty sure you’d be within your parental rights to request that your daughter not have access to weapons-grade nuclear substances and six minions.”

“What, don’t you trust her?”

“Only infinitely more than her mother.”

“So, hardly at all.”

Angela laughed, and it was music. Then, quite suddenly, she leaned forward and winced. Moira felt herself wince in response, reaching out for the screen as if Angela was only a window away and she could somehow be of help. But the crisp computer image was only an illusion. “Are you alright?” Moira asked instead, forcing her hand back down onto the desk. 

“Oh, I’m fine. A bit of inflammation from a nanite boost yesterday, it’s just soreness now.”

Of course, nanites meant it had once been something far more serious. Angela was massaging her shoulder; bullet wound? Energy weapon? “You’re certain you’re recovered?”

“Doubting my science?”

“Never.” Moira made herself relax. Angela could take care of herself, and buying a ticket to Zürich over a bruise would be as childish as fretting over a simple video call. They were both adults… which, in fact, proposed a suitable change of subject.

“You know, you should still have a doctor examine you.” Moira changed the tone of her concerns, letting her voice drawl, each word languid and lazy and full of suggestion.

Angela smiled, and wriggled back against the pillows she was resting on. “Did you have someone in mind?”

“Well, since I’m here, I would be most expedient.”

“But Dr. O’Deorain, with your reputation, how could I trust you to be professional?”

“My dear,” Moira purred, and stared down her computer’s camera to meet her audience of one with a piercing gaze, “when have I been anything else? Now, take off your shirt for me.”

Angela started on her buttons with mock coyness, taking them slowly. She paused as soon as she’d uncovered the first hints of something white and lacy, leaving fascinating suggestions of what was to come exposed. More prepared for a call than she’d looked. “You know, doctor,” she said, “it’s been over two weeks since I was last examined.”

Moira clicked her teeth in feigned disapproval. “Such negligence, my dear. I really will have to—“

“—Mooother!”

Moira froze for half a second at the sound of her daughter’s voice, then dove for the screen controls just as she was barging into the room. Angela had been faster, tilting her camera up so that only her face was showing. Einin O’Deorain burst into the room with all the imperious confidence of a nine-year-old who was used to being right all the time. “Moother, have you signed my school field trip form yet?”

“Einin.” The literature suggested that getting curt with a child was counterproductive, but there were moments where parenting took considerable effort. She took a steadying breath. “We’ve spoken about barging in without knocking, you know how dangerous some of my work is.”

Einin shrugged. “You were just talking to Angela, that’s not dangerous.”

“That’s beside the point. Knocking.”

“Fiine. But have you signed my school form or not? There’s only twenty five spots on the tower tour trip, and I promised Najme I’d go with her! I  _ have _ to have the form in by tomorrow first thing.”

Moira sat up to her full height, wove her fingers together in her lap in a stance of perfect professionalism. “Very well, Miss O’Deorain, you’ll have it on your desk by dinnertime. Will that be all?”

Einin rolled her eyes and groaned as she left, but didn’t actually vocalize her clearly expressed ‘I wish you wouldn’t be so weird, mother’. Successful parenting all around, though at least a sarcastic ‘thank you’ might have been nice. 

Angela, back on the computer screen, was trying not to laugh and failing miserably. “I’m sorry, it’s just… when you’re mothering, you’re sort of… cute.”

Not a term Moira often used to describe her, but the acres of carefully applied foundation hid her pale skin’s flush. “I shall try to take that as a compliment.”

“You should.” Angela had mostly stopped laughing now, though it was clearly a struggle. “I like it. I… well, you know.”

“I do.” 

Angela sobered up, and they danced around another taboo subject: the three words that neither had yet managed to speak again. Nine years ago, ‘I love you’ had been routine. But this new thing they had, with its distance and all its other complexities, all made those three words seem a dangerous admittance of how much this meant to both of them. “You know,” she said at last, “my friends and I don’t have any more immediate plans, and the clinic is learning to manage without me. I think I could take a week to myself, maybe next month?”

Moira smiled. “I could arrange some time off. It would be nice. To see you again.”

“Then it’s a date.” Angela’s own smile grew more wicked, and she adjusted her camera  back down again. “Now, where were we?”

“Home control, lock master bedroom.” Moira’s computer chimed its acknowledgment, and played a satisfying little click noise. “I think, my dear, you were being negligent. We are going to have to fix that.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Pertinent Spoilers for Genetic History:  
> \- Moira and Angela used to date, and were trying to have a kid together before breaking up nine years ago. Due to Moira's insistence on carrying the child, despite being born sans uterus, the procedure was complicated and failed several times.   
> \- After their breakup, Moira's last attempt at procreation was successful, producing a daughter (Einin O'Deorain, now age 9) who Angela did not know about.  
> \- During the course of certain shenanigans, ending in kidnapping and a dramatic rescue, Angela worked with Moira and learned of Einin's existence. The two met, and bonded.   
> \- Moira and Angela reconciled and decided to begin seeing each-other romantically again, despite their alliances to Talon and Overwatch respectively remaining unchanged.


End file.
